Should I host my blog on-site or off-site?
-
I'm working on a personal project at the moment...basically the blog will be active before the website - it's one of those things where the blog is the journey to the finished website kinda thing (picture it sort of like an adventure traveller who plans to write a book about his travels, and also blogs about his experiences as they happen - eventually leading up to the launch of the book).
Ideally the blog would be a part of the website, so all the links the blog gets help your website to rank (and it's the website I'm interested in ranking obviously, not the blog). But there are two problems:
1. I don't really want people using my website before it's completed.
2. I'd kinda like to have a different design and theme to the blog, and for it to have it's own domain and branding. I also don't want to clog up my website with random blog posts - and I'd like the freedom of an independent platform to do things that my website is not designed for.
Any suggestions on how to solve this problem? Is there a way to let Google know that the blog is a part of my site even though it's on a different domain? How would I funnel all of the link-juice from the blog most effectively?
-
Hi Clancy,
Best practices is to host your blog on the same domain, and same subdomain, as your main website. This offers so many long term benefits, you're almost throwing everything away if you consider anything else.
Depending on the technology you are using to construct your website, there are different ways to prevent your users from accessing your site, but there is not a one-size-fits-all solution. If you're using WordPress, you can simply install a maintenance or "coming-soon" type plugin to keep visitors out, and then install your blog on a subdirectory. example.com/blog
If this isn't possible and you want to host your blog elsewhere, keeping on a subdomain as Jim suggested would be the next best alternative. Apart from linking to your site, there's not much else you can do to pass link juice between the two sites. You can, after your site launches, move your blog and migrate your traffic via 301 redirects.
-
How about a subdomain for your blog "myblog.mydomain.com".
This would give you the requirements in hand you described before.
If you host your domain with a hosting provider, then you normally can create subdomains yourself.
regards,
jim cetin
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Backlinks in PDF's created on my site causing algo demotion.
I have a few questions. My website allows people to create custom 'puzzle' and education (i.e. "math") worksheets - enter your 'school spelling list' - I can make a crossword or many other puzzles (PDF form) from it. I recently realized that I was being penalized for the backlink I placed in each one. I placed in each PDF ("Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker") - I was linking the "crossword maker" back to my site. BAD! I am now aware of this. I have recently disavowed several hundred backlinks where people have posted those PDF's online - and have started to see a big recovery in ranking and traffic. My questions about my citation: "Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker":
Branding | | Addict
1. Moving forward, can I leave the same citation on each PDF - but just link 'mydomain.com' back to my domain (not the keywords, just the domain)
2. If not, can I just leave the unlinked text on the PDF: i.e. "Created with mydomain.com Crossword maker" -no embeded links at all.
3. Is it OK to assert that they must leave the "citation" (linked/unlinked?) to post them on their website as a part of my terms of use? If not, is there an acceptable way to get credit for giving away free custom content - other than asking for an 'optional' link back? I have thousands more of these that I would need to end up disavowing so knowing exactly what is permissible is extremely important to me moving forward. I have watched this whiteboard Friday: https://moz.com/blog/backlinks-maximize-benefits-avoid-problems-whiteboard-friday (I am looking for clarification on what I can put in the original content I essentially syndicate - the content is different on each and every PDF, except for the citation). Thank you so much for your time and help!0 -
Hosted content vs Dedicated website (for large piece of content)
There is one question that keep bugging us and for which we are looking for a logical answer – to put it short, in which context(s) is it preferable to publish original content on a company website vs on a dedicated external platform with its own URL? To give a little more details: we an education company that provides languages course abroad and that functions like a specialised travel agency. Each trip is very specific – it depends on people's language level, objectives, budget, etc. – so we provide tailor-made advice for each of our students. Our site is not an e-commerce site, and a typical call-to-action is a request for a 1-to-1 interview with one of our agents, or a quote request for a language trip project. The top conversion for us is an enrolment for a language course abroad. We have a corporate websites structure where we have 1 website per locale where we operate, which means 14 websites in 7 different languages. We produce smaller pieces of content for these websites in a dedicated section – the rest of the website being mostly a presentation of our products, services and destinations – but here we intend to create a very large Quiz which will be based on multiple audio files. The content will be translated into multiple languages (likely 10 different languages) and will require some rather heavy development. We intend to add sections for scoreboards, stats, a log-in section (probably Facebook), etc. This sounds to us like something we should host on a specific URL, but then how can we make the most of the SEO benefits that we will (hopefully) get with such content? We plan to have an about section where we explain a little bit who we are, where we will probably link back to our corporate websites, but of course we want our project to live for itself and to be as far from commercial as possible – while still making the most of the SEO benefits. How can we do this in the most subtle / logical way? Would it be better to host our Quiz on our corporate domains? Thanks in advance for your advice. Maëlle
Branding | | ESL_Education0 -
Renaming of Link within Site Links - Brand Issues
Hi, We welcome your thoughts on the current problem we are experiencing: When searching for our client's brand name, their previous sponsors name is shown within the Site Links to a very important page. We are keen to change this reference within the Site Link but keep the link itself. We have untaken the following without any change to the words used within this particular Site Link: 1) Removal of previous-sponsors name sitewide: Title tags Alt attribute Anchors Page names Image names 2) Removal of sponsors name from 200+ sister sites: Title tags Alt attribute Anchors Page names Image names 3) Modification of [previous-sponsor + client] within Wikipedia:
Branding | | PhilYarrow
There were 250+ mentions of the sponsor + client within Wikipedia. References have either been deleted or changed to past tense. (Google has been extremely slow at indexing these changes.) 4) Removal of off-site mentions:
After using Advanced Filters within OSE, we extracted all links that included the previous-sponsors name. We filtered these by DA and approached these sites and requested they update their links/on-site content to include the up-to-date name. This included large news organisations and reference sources. We also used Google operators (inurl, inanchor, intitle) to search for references mentions of [previous-sponsor + client]. We used Buzzstream to collate this data and contacted hundreds of sites sorted by DA. 5) We have twice requested demotion of the Site Link via GWT without success. Google clearly see's the Site Link as too important to remove it. The following is useful background information:
The [client + previous-sponsor] worked together for 5+ years. Our client is known by it's own brand, but it was also called in certain arenas as [client + previous-sponsor].
Fresh mentions of [client + previous-sponsor] are frequent. Examples of this are from collectors merchandise and videos that are posted frequently. The page being shown within the Site Links is essential. It cannot be moved. With a PA of mid-70's.
We have changed the Title of the page multiple times, without any change to the Site Link. Thanks
Phil0 -
New site just launched - would appreciate some feedback!
Hi, Some may have seen me around the forum recently asking a few questions about my website which was being re-vamped. Well its now live. www.followuk.co.uk Would love some actionable advice / constructive criticism. Website background: It started life as a website displaying dates for UK bank holidays, noticed some good traffic/sharing so decided to open it up to UK occasions. This resulted in more traffic and social sharing so over the last month I have re-built the whole website to be responsive and 'I hope' professional / interesting to visitors. I also opened it up further into other UK dates such as sporting events and festivals - these categories will gain more pages as well as new categories to come. I'm hoping to turn it into a little UK resource for this type of content. Thank you.
Branding | | followuk1 -
Is duplicating video across several sites a bad thing?
Hi, We have a fairly successful YouTube Channel where we create unique and helpful videos that are related to our core business activity. When we create these videos would you consider it a bad thing to not only post them on YouTube but also a couple of the smaller sites such as Metacafe and Dailymotion? Sending to multiple sites would possibly achieve more total views but would this kind of duplication potentially be harmful to the overall success of the video and have a knock on effect when it comes to how it ranks in Google? Thanks for your help.
Branding | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Tips for promoting the blog section of our eCommerce site
Hi, With the recent Google updates we're thinking that unique content is more important than ever in order to gain high quality, natural links from genuine users. As such we're thinking that our blog (http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/igloo/) might be more important than ever. Don't be put off by the lack of Page Authority or Google Page Rank; we've only just moved to this address from the subdomain igloo.refreshcartridges.co.uk. The content is certainly rather niche; an article like http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/igloo/how-to-the-reset-purge-counter-on-a-brother-printer-with-a-numerical-pad/ will be helpful to thousands of users who own this particular range of printer but it's debatable as to whether it is sufficiently mainstream to be openly shared and linked to. We ping to sites such as Technorati, produce videos to accompany much of the content (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dxmm4-blN8&list=UUH93Kwax4CcEIAOsXWb6CiA&index=1&feature=plcp for example) and provide easy sharing buttons. I do however think that we could be doing more to actively ‘push’ this content on to potential customers. I'm not naive enough to think that niche articles like this will be enough to get hundreds of links and tens of thousands of reads but printer news, reviews and support is pretty much the only thing we can write about while being relevant to our core business. I would however like to get the best exposure that we can for these articles which is why I’m asking for your advice today. I would really appreciate any ideas you may have as to how else we could gain the best value from these unique articles and videos. I apologise for this being such an open ended question but any and all advice on how to maximise this resource would be appreciated. Many thanks!
Branding | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Expert site feedback required please
Hi all, I would really appreciate some feedback on a site i have developed for a client. To give you a little background, we sell cheese and other associated products online. The site has been online for about a year or so but SEO only really implemented in the last few months. The site visitors are low at the moment which is leading to low sales of course 🙂 I would love some feedback on the areas listed below. My goal is to improve visitor numbers, visibility of the site and sales. Not much then... 😉 • Site design
Branding | | ChrisAntoniou
• Usability
• On-page SEO
• Off-page SEO
• Any other feedback / advice you would be kind enough to offer The site address is: http://www.internationalcheese.co.uk Thanks in advance, i look forward to reading your responses! 🙂 Chris.0 -
Need Help Regarding Guest Blog Posts
Hello, I have recently joined here to read up about SEO and to access the tools for my in-house “SEO guy” who has just started. So I’m a little bit green to all of this and have a quick question regarding guest posting. He says that there is a lot to do with my sites; building links, correcting errors on some of my sites, etc. He showed me from the reports on here and he is an honest trustworthy guy, so not worried about being scammed. A lot of this stuff goes over my head though, so he directed me to the question and answer area/blog if I have any worries or queries. He wants to put a section on the home page of my blog promoting the fact that I accept guest posts. I understand that this will help me rank higher (hopefully!) and also he says I should be trying to post on other blogs to get these links for my sites. I think this might be a good idea because I have a few websites and not a lot of time or money to do a great amount of content (which I’m told needs to be regular and of high quality), perhaps a post a week on each site I can manage at the moment. I think that some competitors might want to use this opportunity to get a link from my website to theirs. I must admit I’m a little bit hesitant about doing this if it helps them. He is telling me that just one link in the author area of the post is fine, and only to accept good quality posts. But I just want some other people’s opinions as well. Are there any ground rules that someone can recommend I stick to? Along the lines of, how many links I allow them to have in their post, where these links should be, how long the content should be as a minimum, etc. Thanks in advance. Jeff
Branding | | JonathanRolande0